Al-gorithms . . . conform or suffer?

      Thanks to poet/mathematician Scott Williams who alerted me to this work by "a good poet and friend" Stephen Lewandowski, a retired conservation worker and author of 14 books (for example, One Foot) with another on the way.  Steve says this of his poem:  "SPELL" exists because I fear the misuse of algorithms to standardize people . . ."

A SPELL AGAINST AL-GORITHMS     by Stephen Lewandowski

Named for a man, Abu Ja-far Muhammed ibn Musa,
and the Persian city Khwarizma where he lived
in the year 800, pursuing calculations
arithmetical and al-gebraical.

Begins admirably as
“how to solve a class of problems” and
proceeds through disambiguation to specification by
massaging a mass of data.
If the data are people, then
the massage is called a “census.”  
If people are unique then
proceed no further.
Can people be disambiguated?

     Statement of problem                 
     Creation of model                       
     Choose algorithm                        
     Calibrate algorithm                     
     Implement calculating algorithm 
     Create document and check        
               for elegance                     

Like many remarkable thoughts
the algorithmic counting
begins small and modest
“cute” in other words.
But the process from Hilbert to Turing
both mechanizes and weaponizes
the tool, which becomes the master.
The master forms the people through
massaging their numbers.
The citizen conforms or suffers.

Be-gone cruel Procrustes before we fit you on your own bed.

Over the years, algorithms have sometimes shaped poetry.

Here is a link to an earlier posting in this blog that offers a poem shaped by a formula --

a creation by Halifax poet Robert Dawson. 

The OULIPO group also has celebrated poetry constructed within constraints.